CHAPTER XIV.
VISITORS.
The Tuesday following Mary's arrival at Mrs.Mason's, there was a social gathering at the house of Mr.Knight.This gathering could hardly be called a tea party, but came more directly under the head of an "afternoon's visit," for by two o'clock every guest had arrived, and the "north room" was filled with ladies, whose tongues, like their hands, were in full play.

Leathern reticules, delicate embroidery, and gold thimbles were not then in vogue in Rice Corner; but on the contrary, some of Mrs.Knight's visitors brought with them large, old-fashioned work-bags, from which the ends of the polished knitting-needles were discernible; while another apologized for the magnitude of her work, saying that "her man had fretted about his trousers until she herself began to think it was time to finish them; and so when she found Miss Mason wasn't to be there, she had just brought them along." In spite of her uniform kindness, Mrs.Mason was regarded by some of her neighbors as a bugbear, and this allusion to her immediately turned the conversation in that direction.
"Now, do tell," said Widow Perkins, vigorously rapping her snuff-box and passing it around.

"Now, do tell if it's true that Miss Mason has took a girl from the town-house ?" On being assured that such was the fact, she continued "Now I _will_ give up.

Plagued as she is for things, what could have possessed her ?" "I was not aware that she was very much troubled to live," said Mrs.
Knight, whose way of thinking, and manner of expressing herself, was entirely unlike Mrs.Perkins.
"Wall, she is," was Mrs.Perkins's reply; and then hitching her chair closer to the group near her, and sinking her voice to a whisper, she added, "You mustn't speak of it on any account, for I wouldn't have it go from me, but my Sally Ann was over there t'other day, and neither Miss Mason nor Judy was to home.

Sally Ann has a sight of curiosity,--I don't know nothing under the sun where she gets it, for I hain't a mite,--Wall, as I was tellin' you, there was nobody to home, and Sally Ann she slips down cellar and peeks into the pork barrel, and as true as you live, there warn't a piece there.